


Better

by Cosmic_Iguana



Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Kissing, Romance, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:53:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26622457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cosmic_Iguana/pseuds/Cosmic_Iguana
Summary: Kali awakens from a startling nightmare, one that depicts a past she'd rather forget. Aloth consoles his Watcher, holding her gently as the two try to make sense of the dreams and faces that plague her. So that they may discuss what to do next...
Relationships: Aloth Corfiser & Female Watcher, Aloth Corfiser & The Watcher, Aloth Corfiser/Female Watcher, Aloth Corfiser/Original Female Character(s), Aloth Corfiser/The Watcher
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	Better

**Author's Note:**

> This was a small something I wrote from a sudden bout of inspiration. Kudos and comments would be very much appreciated! Thank you for clicking!

There are memories she wishes to forget, wishes would leave her alone. And most nights they do. If becoming a Watcher had granted any sort of boon, it was that her mind became so disquiet with all manner of other things that the hauntings of the past faded into obscurity against them.

Tonight was no such night. The creaking of The Defiant reminded her of another ship. Slick with the sweat of slaves and the stench of their blistered and boiled skin, oozing all over the floor like spilt milk. Theirs moans of agony and their wails of pain masking the sound of the waves like a symphony of sadness. Numerous bodies writhing in their own filth for months yet clinging to each other for warmth and a bit of comradeship...

She remembers another elf, pale like her with a face also like hers but handsome, or once handsome. He shivered violently, fingers clawing for her, for some kind of release from the neverending voyage. For the sweet release of death’s cold kiss...he begged, pleading in an agonised voice - if a horse croak could be a voice - for her to use her magic to take his life. Anything...anything..Kali...Kali...

“Kali!” Aloth’s voice and hands shake her awake. 

The Defiant is still moving, it’s moans not comforting. But his hand, a gentle grasp on her shoulder, is all the comfort she needs to know she is not back there. His delicate handling of her is her reality, not the bite and flinch of the chains that once wrapped around her. The harshness of the rope that once choked her world.

She sits up, barely has time to utter a word when he pulls her to his chest. A hand to her head as he cradles her. She doesn’t fight it, even if her heart and limbs try to force her to. Lets him hold her, lets his arms - strong from carrying his damn book - protect her from the world, just for a moment. She has time to brush away her tears, tell him everything is alright and not to worry later. He wouldn’t hurt her, never cause her pain.

She lets the tears flow freely, and the flood outwards all the more as Aloth tightens his hold on her, embracing her choked sobs as he presses his lips to her head. Quiet whispers streaming into her hair that everything was okay, that she was safe.

With a shuddery breath, she recollects herself. Listens to his words carefully until she feels the last of the remnants of the dream finally disappear. And all that is real anymore is Aloth’s heartbeat, the waves lapping against the ship and warmth of the candlelight.

“I’m fine,” She mumbles into his shirt, well wet from her tears. Even as she pulls away she can feel his arms still around her, loose but ready to envelop her again should she want to be held a moment longer. 

He gives her this look, the same one he pulls when he is searching through his books. Cramming all kinds of knowledge into that magnificent mind of his. He isn’t convinced she’s fine whatsoever, and his eyes convey that she should know better than to pretend she is with him. She can be vulnerable, just as she allows him to be.

“It’s just a nightmare, Aloth,” She reminds him. Cupping his cheek. “Nightmares can’t harm me,” She traces a circle along his cheekbone, as if to gently soften the concerned crease that tugs at it.

“Not physically…” He mumbles worriedly. “But they can manifest in other ways,” He reaches for her hand, turns it away from his cheek and plants a kiss to the palm. “You have been getting them more frequently as of late…”

“Being back in the Deadfire has...been difficult,” She confesses. She had made no effort to hide her distaste of the place she once called home, if they weren’t on the hunt of Eothas, she would never have stepped foot back here. The sweltering heat, the warring factions, the relentless sea creatures, her stubborn sea sickness... but the extent of it she has tried to bury, especially from him. But Aloth has always looked at her with attentive eyes, has always got her all figured out whether she likes it or not.

He’s seen her naked back, marred from the biting of whips and does not grimace when he sees them like so many have before. He reaches round and strokes them tenderly, as if reading her mind. Kisses her left shoulder where one of the jagged lines reaches to her collar bone, as if the man who had etched it onto her skin wanted her to remember when they were inflicted each time she looked down. And Aloth only wanted her to remember that this was his favourite spot to show her love.

“Is there ought I might do to ease your worries,” He says, a slight lilt in his voice which she smirks at. Him simply being here, being hers, was enough. But as he presses open-mouthed kisses along her shoulder, her collar and her neck suddenly, him only kissing her isn’t enough. As if his mouth was charting her like a map, as if he was chanting some forbidden spell on her warm skin...whatever he was looking for she wanted to give it up, give all of it up. If only to help her forget about the nightmare, to live in the present and repress the past...but then he stops, pulls away and looks at her with adoring eyes that slowly shift into worry. There’s something else, something he wants to say but the words get knotted in his throat.

“What is it?” She hates this kind of silence, when words are tethering on the edge of being uttered but some kind of fear, a misplaced fear, stops them. There’s nothing more she wants than for Aloth to speak his mind around her. There’s only ever so much she can read on that handsome face of his, only so much she can analyse from his silent gesture and his kisses. That mind of his is an enigma, a black pool she wishes to delve into, but only if he’ll let her. 

But she is worried she may not like his question.

He swallows the knot and speaks softly. “Who’s Finn?”

A face comes back, peers into her mind like an intruder. With a face like hers, but not a woman, a man. A male glamfellen, with wispy white hair and a golden earring he still wears from when he and her punctured his ear when they were little. She remembers the slaver was harder on him compared to the others, unable to beat the spirit he possessed as easily as he did the rest. Most of her scars formed from when she shielded his body with hers and still his back was picked clean of skin from the whip and knuckles and boots. 

They were twins but he always had this complex of feeling like the older brother, the protector. She didn’t mind, it made him happy filling in that role. But when his mind started to slip away under the cruelty of enslavement he felt bad he couldn’t be the protector anymore, he despised being the protected…protected by her. But if she hadn’t protected him then he would have died or worse...

And then his protector was gone...

She must have looked odd, because Aloth scrambles to hold her face like he’s afraid of her looking away from him, like she’ll slip into unconsciousness. 

“I’m...you...I apologise, if you are not ready to speak of it then I shall let it lie,” He whispers.

“No...it’s...how did you know that name?” She asks. Aloth isn’t aware she’s not an only child, she’s never mentioned Finn to anyone before. Honestly, she’s amazed she can even remember him after spending so long trying to bury his name in drink. 

Maybe now was the time to come clean.

“You were whispering it as you slept...then you started to shout it, like you were trying to warn him about something,” He says.

“I think my warning may have come too late,” She chuckles sadly. “About thirty three years too late,”

“Kali…”

“Finn’s is my...was, my brother...my twin,” She sighs, taking his hands away from her face and pinching her nose in frustration. That guilt, like a clawed hand coiled around her heart squeezes tighter as the memories start flooding in. As though she was recollecting a drunken night in the early morning of sobriety. “Being back home reminds me of him. Reminds me of what I left behind,”

“Your brother? You never mentioned him,”

“He’s not a fun topic,” 

“And he passed away? Were you both…” he doesn’t dare say it, and she finds that rather endearing, like the word slave is a dirty word, a heretical phrase only sinners would dare spout. It’s okay to say it, denying what she was wouldn’t help anyone, just as drowning herself in drink never helped anyone but the bartenders. She understands he doesn’t want her to remember. But the only way she could truly be rid of the chains was acknowledging what had happened, and dealing with it.

“Slaves,” She states. “Yes, our mother gave us to the slavers together,” 

“How did he die?” Aloth asks.

“I…” No, she’s not sure. It dawns on her that she’s been talking about him like he’s dead, but she never saw her brother die. It wasn’t unrealistic to come to that conclusion, sure. They were young and the young ones barely survive unless they’re hardier than most - the slavers would call that natural selection, but she’d call it slaughter - However, they were separated by distance, not by death. 

She doesn’t know what happened to him.

“I honestly have no idea. I have not seen him since I was taken by Orisma,”

A flash of hope flickers in his eyes. “So, he could be alive? And in the Deadfire?”

She loves how he wants to help, she can practically hear the cogs whir in his head. Ready to lace up his boots and take on the seas in search of her family. But she can’t afford to get her hopes up, because if he does turn out to be dead after all it may break her.

“He was weak, and I mean that factually. I wouldn’t have survived much longer if Orisma hadn’t purchased me and Finn was worse. It wasn’t just his life that was slipping away, he was losing his mind,”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean..”

“Even if by some miracle he still drew breath. Do you understand how impossible it is to track down slaves? Especially one specific slave in a vast ocean filled with them? He could have been purchased and be anywhere in Eora, he could have been stolen by more slavers over and over again and they don’t keep records of that, Aloth…”

“But there’s a chance, Kali. You’ve been tasked against the impossible before, why are you so hesitant to see where this goes? It is family, your family,”

She intertwines her fingers through his. Takes a deep breath to release her frustration. “You’re my family. You’re alive, and here. I won’t go chasing ghosts to satisfy some need of feeling like I belong,”

“He might need you,” 

'Don’t say that' she thinks. She doesn’t want nor need to feel like a protector again. If she steps into that role she’ll pour her heart into it and if all she finds is a corpse she’ll feel like she has failed Finn all over again. And the drink might not be enough to free her of the guilt this time. Her memory of him, the one that haunts her dreams, might carve out her heart and spit on it and she wouldn’t even be angry. It would be justice. He'll reach into her chest, eyes streaming with tears and the constant questions of why, why, why, bleeding from his lips; the face of a child blending with the grown man he could have grown up to be staring back at her as he rips the organ straight out...

But Aloth has a point all the same. The chance...the chance….the chance. He could be alive, he could be alive and well and have no need for his sister, and that would be a welcome outcome. He might still be a slave. One who is gaunt and shackled beneath a ship in the dark, or maybe he serves a noble soul and lives a life free of fear and wondering when his next meal will be. Still a slave, but one who lives a decent life.

Was this why the dream came? Perhaps that was why the haunting figure of Finn with crying eyes came to her? Was some part of her still curious after all this time? Had she not buried the desire to find her brother as well she thought? After all this time was she still haunted by not knowing? Then why wasn’t she jumping at the opportunity to find Finn after Aloth’s words? 

What was this really about? Her being afraid of finding a corpse...or was she more afraid of finding a brother, alive and still fresh with anger of her departure?

“You think...I should what? Turn the ship around and start this silly search for my family?”

Aloth pours warmth into his expression, a smile creases his pale skin as he begins to play with her fingers. “Nothing you do is ever silly. And you're the captain, who would ever argue with you?”

She snorts. “Have you met Eder? Serafen? Pallegina?...You? I can’t do anything without the running commentary,”

“I understand Serafen likes the sound of his own voice; But for the rest of us...misfits...you require our comments of wit to keep that ego of yours in check, Watcher,” He answered with a tilt to his head, waiting eagerly for her to agree with the obvious. “I dread to wonder what you’d be like if you had a trail of adoring fans behind you, what would happen…”

“Not nearly as good sex, that’s for certain,” She remarks, revelling at the way his ears burn.

“Hmm, as much as I am keen to hear more; now you’re trying to change the subject,”

She gives him a pained smile. “I can’t get away with anything with you,” She pokes him in the cheek lightly, then casts a rather mournful gaze out of the window to her room. “If what you say is perhaps true...then you’re right. He may need me. I owe him too much to just pretend he never existed...I think I’ve sullied his memory long enough,”

“You coped the only way you knew how, you’re doing better,” And his words felt like warm sunlight. Better, such a simple word. She wasn't doing great, nor was she doing abhorrently. Better, slowly getting good but allowed the moments of pause and flaws to slip in. Slowly but surely she was rising from the mountain of empty bottles like a dawn peeking over the horizon, not enough to warm the lands below but she was dawning all the same. 

She was doing better. Perhaps good enough to reunite with her family, if they were still out there. To forgo the shame she felt for leaving Finn behind and to search for him despite the fear that he would reject her or that he would be dead.

And for Aloth to believe she was doing better meant the world to her.


End file.
